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Friday, July 10, 2009

I'm a crafter, howbout you?

My first character that I played to level 60 was a warlock. (I still have that character, but she's been stuck at 70 for a while now). Her trade skills were tailoring and herbalism. And when I discovered how fun and profitable trade skills were it didn't take too long before I had crafted not only my own gear, but I was also making good money on crafting bags, and selling my gathered herbs.

I think this has set the tone for the rest of my moneymaking in WoW because ever since I haven't bought materials on the AH too often anymore. I levelled various other characters, and by the end of BC I had 5 70s whose trade skills could all work together and combined with Thror's characters we could create just about anything there was to create in the game.

When I switched to my priest she started out with herbalism as well, and I have to say that I honestly believe that this is one of the better trade skills while levelling. She had enchanting as her second trade skill, and I feel that this has been the best choice ever. Though, I do believe that being powerlevelled through instances, and getting all the greens did help in levelling my enchanting...a lot.

Eventually I switched her to alchemy for min/maxing, and the alchemist's stone back then was quite the enormous upgrade over herbalism, which had no perks at all back then (well, other than making money). And since I had levelled a druid it was only a logical choice to stick her in herbalism, being that you don't even have to switch out of bird-form to pick flowers.

Show me the money!

There are various blogs very good at telling people how to make money, so I'm not going to go to deep into this. But I do believe that I can safely say that most money making strategies are to buy base materials, craft stuff with them, and sell the end product. The tradeskills I have seen used most for this are inscription, jewelcrafting, and enchanting.

Here's the catch though. Most of these blogs say that making money is not about having fun. It's about getting the highest return on the lowest investment. And while technically I cannot agree with them more, I do want to remind people that you're not actually earning your real life bread with this. And I bet that most of you, myself included, started playing this game for one simple thing; fun.

So while you can make a lot of money in the AH grind, most people don't think this is particularly pleasurable, and instead are choosing to make slightly less money, but do it in a way that they enjoy.

(In between I am reading this out loud to Thror, and he says that he believes that Gevlon is deep down taking pleasure out of raiding the AH more than out of real raiding, I think I have to agree with him).

Some quick tips and tricks

Pick a trade skill that goes well with your class. Leatherworking on a mage is not the most useful combination.

Do what you enjoy doing. This might sound odd, but believe me, there are only a few dark souls out there who really enjoy the AH grind. Most (like me) would just give up on it if they didn't enjoy what they were doing.

Where does crafting fit in here then?Well, I personally use crafting as a tool for what I enjoy most in the game, raiding. I'm still an alchemist/enchanter on my main, and those give me the extra perks of mad alchemist potions, cheap flasks (you need quite a few while wiping on progression content), mixology, and ring enchants. On top of this, enchanting enables me to pick up the items in our raids nobody wants, and shard them so we can enchant the rest of the raid members, or sell them to get what we need instead.

On my other toons I use crafting mainly so that I can be self sufficient. My druid was my first alt at 80 so that I could get herbing again for alchemy, and I enjoy doing so on her. It feels as if she's stalking a prey from high up, only to dive down when I see a yellow dot on the map.

So while crafting is not really a moneymaker for me, it is definitely a money saver. On top of this I have to admit that I secretly really enjoy the RP aspect of crafting. Even though I'm not an RPer in the game (well, not most of the time), I like the thought of being able to twiddle my hands and magically enhance my rings to turn into a better version.

6 comments:

nice job:)as you mentioned me in the smaller post before, i get to tell what my chars are...the Paladin is alchemist, as he raids normally...and (shame on me) herbalism (cooking ans fishing at max to create his own buff food as well). the shadowpriest is tailor since the very beginning and miner (love collecting things).

the old warlock (stuck at 70 since bc) was also tailor and alchemist.

so, i guess im nor a pure crafter nor a pure buyer...i craft things to sell them, i buy other things i cant craft from the money i get.

and: absolutely addicted in dailies. when there is enough time, i do 25 per day which gives about 400 gold. 8-)

I know I used to be a crafter to take care of myself, I have most stuff covered, except a jc, which seems wierd thinking about, but I just know so many. Nowadays I just bid low on mats and make stuff to de to make money. At the moment I mostly DE lw'ing stuff since I can get it around 6g75s a stack and I get back an average of 17g, pretty good profit when I can get around 100 stacks a weekend, more than enough for raiding g...Now I just need to go out and splurge on something.

I'm a bit of both. I mine saronite and titanium to sell on the AH, but I gather herbs for my inscriptionist to use learning new glyphs and creating darkmoon cards. However, my time is limited and I can't really gather all the herbs I need, so I will scout the AH and buy up any cheap herbs and inks. If there are a lot of them, I'll turn them into snowfall ink and put them up for sale, turning a bit of a profit.

I'm mainly a crafter. I buy what I need to powerlevel my professions to the next level cap whenever I hit the magic numbers (10, 20, 35, 50, 60 or 65). I do have toons that have gathering skills, but what they find, I keep for myself.

I honestly feel sorry for those who do whatever is most efficient with no regard for whether it is fun or not. The catch is that they're actually terrible inefficient, since they're spending time playing a game but not having fun. That's not even inefficient, that's counter-productive.

As for raiding the AH, why not just hack accounts and steal gold directly? It sounds like much less work.

Crafter. I sold EVERY piece of armor I made leveling my main, and skinned ALMOST every mat that I needed. I thought that's what you were supposed to do! I had no concept of powerleveling at that time. DK's were made for having your own (dis)enchanter and miner for farming. Now I'm leveling a priest w/ herb/alch and it's great having constant buffs and a DK at the MB to send greens to. I also sold every green BOE I found on my main until Outland. Those were the days of self-sufficiency! I have 10K in the bank with almost no boring AH grinding. I just sell what I get/make, and occasionally invest in furs or something that's likely to take off after a patch. My main hasn't made a piece of armor in many months.